“That’s why I came to Dallas. I might not have known it was going to be this much scrutiny in the media but believe me, I wanted to be here with the Cowboys — America’s Team.

“It’s about time America likes a Ryan.”

Ryan did concede his group’s defensive shortcomings from 2011 and said, “we definitely want to deliver a better product than we did last year.”

Cowboys, Spencer still far from deal: Anthony Spencer hoped to receive an contract extension from the Cowboys. But the two sides never worked out their differences and the linebacker will play for the franchise tag of $8.84 million.

“We’re going to see how he does this year,” said Stephen Jones, the Cowboys executive vice president. “We think he had a really good year last year. But when you’re not quite on the same page with each other…

“He’s more on the DeMarcus [Ware] side of the money, and we’re more on another side. There’s a big gap, and so we’ll see if we can close the gap one way or the other.

“Hopefully he’s right. I’d like for him to go get 16 sacks and have a big year. Right now, we’re at a point where we’re too far apart money wise and I understand that. The best thing to do is to play it out this year and we’ll see what happens.”